A semiconductor manufacturing factory increases the entire processing efficiency and improves the productivity by arranging a plurality of plasma processing devices and enabling the plasma processing devices to simultaneously perform desired plasma processing of target objects.
The plasma processing devices are managed by a control device. The control device performs the plasma processing of target objects, e.g., product wafers (or referred to as wafers) in processing spaces on the basis of the processing orders indicated in a plurality of recipes by managing the recipes corresponding to the plasma processing devices (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. H9-129529.
Various kinds of gas are used in the plasma processing device. If a plasma etching device, however, uses fluorocarbon processing gas, a resist used as an etching mask and/or wearable parts such as a focus ring are eroded and by-products are produced. Some by-products are not exhausted and are gradually attached and accumulated on the inner wall of a processing space as organic materials. Such accumulation changes the state of the processing space.
Even though the etching is performed according to the processing order of the recipe identically to the previous time, it is undesirably impossible to obtain the same result as the previous time and a desired characteristic from the processed wafer if the state of the processing space is changed. Accordingly, the following methods have been discussed. One method inserts a test wafer for measuring etching characteristics into intervals of the successive processing of wafers on a regular basis to measure any change in the state of processing space. Another method changes the recipe according to the etched results of wafers and adjusts etching characteristic deviations of wafers within a preset range.
When the recipe is changed according to the state of the processing space, however, it is troublesomely required to individually manage the recipes corresponding to the respective plasma processing devices although the same processing is performed in the plasma processing devices.
In addition, each of the plasma processing devices does not always perform the same processing. A plurality of kinds of processing may be performed in the same processing space. In this case, it is necessary to individually manage as many recipes as the number of kinds of the processing that can be performed by the respective plasma processing devices. For example, when each of the 10 plasma processing devices can perform 10 kinds of the processing in the manufacturing factory, if the recipe is changed according to the state of the processing spaces of the respective plasma processing devices, it is required to manage 100 (i.e. 10 kinds×10 devices) recipes. Especially, today's manufacturing factory has become bigger and the number of the plasma processing devices being installed has become increasing, thereby making it more bothersome and difficult to manage the corresponding recipes.